One of the most common activities in many chemical fields is the preparation of liquid solutions. This happens for example in liquid handling (wet) laboratories in both industry and academia. Outside of industry, most of the preparation is done manually. In some cases the preparation is very delicate, and with the preparation process a variety of parameters such as temperature and pH have to be controlled—sometimes additionally degasification (removal of dissolved gases from liquids) is necessary.
Controlling the amounts of substances going into a solution is critical, as otherwise the solution is essentially random. This becomes particularly important in sciences, where there are few cues (visual or otherwise) to the contents of a solution. Furthermore, monitoring characteristics such as the pH value of a solution is often required for scientific experiments where this information is essential, but it also has significant implications on various other applications. Similarly, monitoring the temperature is valuable in science because pH and temperature are linked—changes in temperature can mask a difference in pH. To this end, it is impossible to control pH to a very accurate degree without knowing the temperature of a solution.
Cleaning the environment in which the solution is prepared is vital as cross contamination is unacceptable in the scientific sphere, and is hardly desired anywhere else. On the other hand, reducing time use is also important in any process automation, and manual cleaning and/or expendable component replacement would negate much of this benefit.
Controlling the temperature of the solution is also important, as some solutions have to be prepared at a certain temperature. While there are ways around this (input substances are at specific temperatures), ideally there should be heating and cooling elements embedded in to the chamber, to regulate the temperature of the chamber.
Controlling the pH of the solution is equally important, as correcting the pH is not particularly difficult (add a certain amount of acid or base). For many scientific solutions this is essential, as they will not be at the correct pH after the components are mixed.
However, to date, automated solutions for use in laboratories have not been satisfactory. As such, we have appreciated the need for an improved automated solution mixer and dispenser.